I am using Hiberante 2.1.4 for a project and have worked through my entire domain model and mapped it to a relational database using the mapping files. I will have a DAO layer to assist with CRUD of the domain model.

My question is what is the best practice of scoping for ID properties of my domain objects?? They are all single column identity type ID properties defined in the mapping file. It seems a public accessor and a private or protected mutator would be the logical choice. Are there any gotcha's with configuring it this way using Hibernate??

Public get / private set method is usually the way I do it - especially in webapps, where you often need to pass around the id in requests parameters. Hibernate itself has no problems with any kind of visiblity.